Functional Needs Assessment Tool for estimating population-level functional difficulties and the need for services and assistive products: pilot testing in Western Uganda.

People's ability to perform cognitively demanding information processing tasks deteriorates over time (e.g., ). However, controlled experiments indicate that performance can be restored to a greater degree after a walk through a natural scene such as an arboretum than after a walk through a cityscape (; ). Findings such as these (; ; ) have provided empirical support for Attention Restoration Theory (). There are many properties of natural scenes that make them different from constructed environments. Nature and images of natural scenes can generate feelings of mystery and awe (e.g., ; ). It has been theorized that the attention underlying such reactions is different from much of daily attention. have theorized that nature is intrinsically fascinating and engenders a “soft” (non-intense) form of involuntary, effortless, bottom-up attention that is different from intense involuntary attention and different from voluntarily directed, top-down attention, which is effortful to various degrees. “Bottom-up” refers to the environmental shaping of attention and is contrasted with “top-down,” which refers to cognitively directed attention. Attention Restoration Theory claims that by engaging involuntary, effortless, bottom-up attention, natural scenes greatly relieve voluntarily directed top-down attention and thereby allow voluntarily directed, top-down attention to be restored from fatigue (). According to , pp. 183–186), four aspects of natural scenes that facilitate attention restoration are: (1) Being Away from the attentional demands of daily tasks and from distractions; (2) Large Extent or scope that reveals meaningful connections or interrelations among the elements of a scene, for example, “a whole other world”; (3) fascination that arises from inherently interesting and/or mysterious patterns; and (4) compatibility between the pre-existing goals or motivations of the person and the actions afforded by the environment. The present discussion of the structure of attention will emphasize Being Away from task-imposed attention to detail and from distractions, Extent as it relates to expansive natural scenes and tall buildings, and Fascination for its implied low level of intensity and effort.